America’s bellwethers crumbled in aligning with Trump in ’20
HOME OF EUGENE DEBS SOCIALIST PARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 1912 SEE FOOTNOTES
By CLAIRE GALOFARO
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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A glass case in the history museum on the main street through this city celebrates its curious place in American lore: There’s a photo of John F. Kennedy Jr. on the courthouse steps, and Richard Nixon at Terre Haute’s little airport. A newsreel playing on a loop describes it as “magic town.”
Vigo County, with about 107,000 people on the western edge of Indiana, long had some mysterious mix of quirky politics, demographics, geography, religion, labor and luck so that it had become America’s most reliable presidential bellwether.
Since 1888, this exhibit boasts, the county voted in line with the nation in every presidential election but two. It missed in 1908 and 1952, then remained a perfect predictor of the U.S. mood, a rare place to toggle between Republicans and Democrats in harmony with America.
“That’s wrong now. We’re going to have to change that poster,” said Susan Tingley, the executive director of the museum, which is in an old overalls factory that closed long ago, like most of the local factories.
Vigo County’s most recent winning streak ended this year, as it did for nearly all the country’s reliable bellwethers, most of them blue-collar, overwhelmingly white communities in the Rust Belt. Of the 19 counties that had a perfect record between 1980 and 2016, all but one voted to reelect President Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden in both the national popular vote and in nearly every battleground state.
The country’s tribalized politics seem to have finally reached these places that used to routinely swing from one party to the other. The only county that maintained its place as a bellwether is Clallam County, in Washington state.
The ones in the middle all crumbled, leaving many here wondering whether this was merely a Trump-fueled fluke or whether the country has cleaved itself so firmly into two opposing camps that these old political standard-bearers are obsolete. Is Vigo County just one more reliably red square in the red middle of America?
“It speaks to an evolution in American politics,” said David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati who analyzed the state of Ohio’s fall from bellwether status this year.
Niven notes these bellwethers were born when political battle lines tended to be drawn more cleanly along economic lines. These middle-class communities were in the center and up for grabs. But as national politics become less about economics and more about culture wars and identity, Democrats have lost their grip in places such as Vigo County that are overwhelmingly white, he said.
Now the places emerging as possible new bellwethers have more racially diverse populations. Delaware’s Kent County last missed in 1992. Its population is 60% white and 27% Black. Blaine County in Montana, which last missed in 1988, is more than 50% Native American.
Vigo County doesn’t look much like America, and its place as its foremost presidential predictor relied on a certain degree of luck, said Matt Bergbower, a political scientist at Indiana State University. It is not as diverse as the nation, with a population that is 85% white. It is not as wealthy or highly educated, either.
But for generations its conservative tilt on social issues was balanced by left-leaning idiosyncrasies. There are four colleges in Terre Haute, a remarkable number for a city its size. It is the birthplace of Eugene V. Debs, a champion for workers’ rights who ran for president as a socialist five times in the early 20th century. The county’s blue-collar workforce was heavily organized and union halls dotted the city.
Terre Haute was once so defined by its factories it even smelled of them. Big industrial plants lined the banks of the Wabash River, and the odor of fermentation and chemicals was in the air. People are happy that the smell is gone now. But it drifted away as the plants closed down, and with it went countless good-paying jobs.
The Democratic-leaning ingredients in town diminished, too. Many young people now leave, seeking better jobs in bigger cities. As industry crumbled, union membership declined.
Trump won in Terre Haute by 15 percentage points, holding his margin of victory in 2016. But local political observers on both sides of the aisle marveled at the dramatic spike in straight-ticket Republican ballots: 11,744, more than one-quarter of all the presidential votes cast. The county government, for the first time anyone can remember, will now be controlled almost entirely by Republicans.
“If you would have told me 10 years ago we would have more straight-ticket Republicans in this county than Democrats, I’d have said you’re a liar,” said Frank Rush, a Republican radio talk show host who voted for Trump.
Rush said Vigo County might be saying goodbye to its bellwether history, but it remains a barometer for the worries and values of the geographic middle of America. People in growing big cities just can’t understand life in a place like this, where it feels like the country is moving on without them.
“And Trump, love him or hate him, approve or disapprove, he at least gave the impression that he really cared about these folks that thought they were left behind and ignored,” Rush said. “That’s why they rallied to his side.”
Todd Thacker, business manager of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he’s willing to take part of the blame for the way this election turned out. He tried mightily to persuade his members to “vote your paycheck” and elect Democrats who support organized labor. But he watched as many instead aligned themselves based on polarizing wedge issues — “God, guns and gays,” he derides it.
Thacker is an avid hunter, he has a concealed carry permit and owns many guns. But the polarized political landscape today has, he said, “brainwashed people to think that if you’re a Democrat, you can’t be a patriotic gun-owning flag-waving American.”
Trump managed to stoke that fear and people listened, fueled by misinformation on social media and pundits bellowing all day about how the other side will destroy democracy.
“He’s not a politician, he’s a scam artist,” said Thacker, who tried to remind people that President Barack Obama didn’t come take people’s guns, President Bill Clinton didn’t, either.
His union supported a program called “Unity in the Community,” that as a response to the national reckoning on racism tried to bring together the police and the Black community. One of his members accused him of supporting a “Marxist” movement.
Thacker says typically about 35% of his members vote Republican. This year, he thinks it increased.
The Trump supporters in the union include Craig Rudisel, who spent 23 years in the military before joining the electricians’ local and has a Trump sign as big as a bathtub on his front lawn.
“I’ve had conversation with people I work with and they say ‘you need to support your brotherhood, you need to support your paycheck,”’ said Rudisel, 50. “And I say ‘I have to support my conscience.’”
Rudisel is drawn to Trump’s position on guns, abortion and taxes. He wears a Make America Great Again cap every day, and was unfazed to receive an anonymous typewritten letter in the mail from someone who described in vulgar terms how much they disapprove of his Trump sign. He likes that Trump upsets people, and he doesn’t mind doing it, either.
“He wants to make America great again, and that’s what we want,” he said. “We are tired of liberal progressive ideals. That’s not what our country was founded on and that’s not how this county should be going in the future. I want the country that I grew up in for my grandson and granddaughter.”
Rudisel is proud of Vigo County’s bellwether history. Like many here, he can off the top of his head rattle off the details of the few elections it missed and that is part of why he has clung to the hope that Trump hasn’t lost. Trump has claimed there was widespread voter fraud, despite offering no evidence to support that charge.
Rudisel thinks what happened here is proof. Vigo County and the rest of the bellwethers always get it right and opted for Trump, so he must be the rightful winner, Rudisel thinks.
Other Trump supporters also pointed to Vigo’s past performance as a sign that the election fight might not be over.
Ken Warner, a stockbroker, said he will accept a Biden presidency but he wonders how so many bellwethers could get it wrong, all at once.
Warner, 64, has toggled between Republicans and Democrats, and wasn’t terribly excited about Trump in the 2016 primary. Warner remains uneasy about the president’s personality. He cringed when Trump antagonized governors during the pandemic and hurled childish insults at people such as the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
But he grew more enthusiastic about Trump throughout his presidency. He cheered for Trump’s economic policies. He supported the tax cuts, the tariffs and his tough stance on China.
The Trump era hasn’t been a boon for Indiana’s factory towns. The sector was recovering from the Great Recession when Trump took office, but that began to stall in 2019. Then the coronavirus caused a plunge in factory jobs in the state, which are now down by almost 40,000 from a year ago.
Warner believes if Trump had gotten a second term, things might have improved. He worries the economy will stagnate under a Democratic administration.
“I think his tweets were part of his downfall,” Warner said. “But the people that voted for Trump didn’t vote for him for his personality. They voted for results.”
Joe Etling was certain that the people of Vigo County would punish Trump for his temperament. Every four years, Etling, who has run the county’s Democratic Party for 24 years, is asked by pundits and politicians to guess who will win the presidential election. This year he said Biden.
“People in this county are good, decent people. They treat people with respect, they’re polite and if you’re out and about, people on the streets are going to welcome you. Well, when you hear some of the things that the president says publicly, they’re not real friendly, they’re not real polite, they’re not real courteous,” he said. “My sense is if you had Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a room with people in Vigo County, they would have substantially more in common with Joe Biden than they ever would have Donald Trump. And yet.”
Etling refuses to accept that his county is fully Republican now.
In 2008, he saw how excited this community was about Obama. When Obama came to town, people packed a school gymnasium and screamed like he was a rock star. The county had from 1960 to 2004 voted within 3 percentage points of the national vote, but it broke that streak to vote overwhelmingly for Obama, who won this county by 16 percentage points. That margin narrowed considerably in 2012, when Obama won Vigo County by just a few hundred votes.
Then it swung wildly rightward, awarding Trump huge margins of victory, twice.
“And you would have to agree that those two gentlemen are about as diametrically opposed as anybody that you could think about. And yet people still did that,” Etling said, and so he thinks they can turn it around again.
There was a bright spot for him in 2020. One of the few Democrats elected was Dr. Janie Myers, the new coroner and the first Black woman in history to win countywide office here.
So Etling is already starting to recruit Democratic candidates to run in local races in 2022, and he thinks it can reclaim its bellwether status.
But Tingley, at the county history museum, isn’t sure this place or any place can be a bellwether these days.
“It is all politics of fear and passion. It’s not about voting for who’s right for you. It’s about avoiding the candidate that scares you the most,” she said. “If it gets back to what’s best for the country, what’s best for individuals, what’s best for communities, I think that’s when the bellwether counties all across the country can hit it again.”
In the meantime, the city is trying rebrand itself.
The signs leading into town welcome visitors to the birthplace of the Coca-Cola bottle. A glass company here invented Coke’s iconic contoured container in 1915.
There’s a mural of the bottle painted on the side of the history museum, and around the town are 39 6-foot-tall brightly-painted bottle sculptures. The goal is to promote Terre Haute as a cultural destination, steeped in Americana history.
Tingley would be happy if the city became known for that. It probably would be more reliable than predicting the president every four years.
___
Associated Press writer Josh Boak and Associated Press data journalist Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.
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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A glass case in the history museum on the main street through this city celebrates its curious place in American lore: There’s a photo of John F. Kennedy Jr. on the courthouse steps, and Richard Nixon at Terre Haute’s little airport. A newsreel playing on a loop describes it as “magic town.”
Vigo County, with about 107,000 people on the western edge of Indiana, long had some mysterious mix of quirky politics, demographics, geography, religion, labor and luck so that it had become America’s most reliable presidential bellwether.
Since 1888, this exhibit boasts, the county voted in line with the nation in every presidential election but two. It missed in 1908 and 1952, then remained a perfect predictor of the U.S. mood, a rare place to toggle between Republicans and Democrats in harmony with America.
“That’s wrong now. We’re going to have to change that poster,” said Susan Tingley, the executive director of the museum, which is in an old overalls factory that closed long ago, like most of the local factories.
Vigo County’s most recent winning streak ended this year, as it did for nearly all the country’s reliable bellwethers, most of them blue-collar, overwhelmingly white communities in the Rust Belt. Of the 19 counties that had a perfect record between 1980 and 2016, all but one voted to reelect President Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden in both the national popular vote and in nearly every battleground state.
The country’s tribalized politics seem to have finally reached these places that used to routinely swing from one party to the other. The only county that maintained its place as a bellwether is Clallam County, in Washington state.
The ones in the middle all crumbled, leaving many here wondering whether this was merely a Trump-fueled fluke or whether the country has cleaved itself so firmly into two opposing camps that these old political standard-bearers are obsolete. Is Vigo County just one more reliably red square in the red middle of America?
“It speaks to an evolution in American politics,” said David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati who analyzed the state of Ohio’s fall from bellwether status this year.
Niven notes these bellwethers were born when political battle lines tended to be drawn more cleanly along economic lines. These middle-class communities were in the center and up for grabs. But as national politics become less about economics and more about culture wars and identity, Democrats have lost their grip in places such as Vigo County that are overwhelmingly white, he said.
Now the places emerging as possible new bellwethers have more racially diverse populations. Delaware’s Kent County last missed in 1992. Its population is 60% white and 27% Black. Blaine County in Montana, which last missed in 1988, is more than 50% Native American.
Vigo County doesn’t look much like America, and its place as its foremost presidential predictor relied on a certain degree of luck, said Matt Bergbower, a political scientist at Indiana State University. It is not as diverse as the nation, with a population that is 85% white. It is not as wealthy or highly educated, either.
But for generations its conservative tilt on social issues was balanced by left-leaning idiosyncrasies. There are four colleges in Terre Haute, a remarkable number for a city its size. It is the birthplace of Eugene V. Debs, a champion for workers’ rights who ran for president as a socialist five times in the early 20th century. The county’s blue-collar workforce was heavily organized and union halls dotted the city.
Terre Haute was once so defined by its factories it even smelled of them. Big industrial plants lined the banks of the Wabash River, and the odor of fermentation and chemicals was in the air. People are happy that the smell is gone now. But it drifted away as the plants closed down, and with it went countless good-paying jobs.
The Democratic-leaning ingredients in town diminished, too. Many young people now leave, seeking better jobs in bigger cities. As industry crumbled, union membership declined.
Trump won in Terre Haute by 15 percentage points, holding his margin of victory in 2016. But local political observers on both sides of the aisle marveled at the dramatic spike in straight-ticket Republican ballots: 11,744, more than one-quarter of all the presidential votes cast. The county government, for the first time anyone can remember, will now be controlled almost entirely by Republicans.
“If you would have told me 10 years ago we would have more straight-ticket Republicans in this county than Democrats, I’d have said you’re a liar,” said Frank Rush, a Republican radio talk show host who voted for Trump.
Rush said Vigo County might be saying goodbye to its bellwether history, but it remains a barometer for the worries and values of the geographic middle of America. People in growing big cities just can’t understand life in a place like this, where it feels like the country is moving on without them.
“And Trump, love him or hate him, approve or disapprove, he at least gave the impression that he really cared about these folks that thought they were left behind and ignored,” Rush said. “That’s why they rallied to his side.”
Todd Thacker, business manager of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he’s willing to take part of the blame for the way this election turned out. He tried mightily to persuade his members to “vote your paycheck” and elect Democrats who support organized labor. But he watched as many instead aligned themselves based on polarizing wedge issues — “God, guns and gays,” he derides it.
Thacker is an avid hunter, he has a concealed carry permit and owns many guns. But the polarized political landscape today has, he said, “brainwashed people to think that if you’re a Democrat, you can’t be a patriotic gun-owning flag-waving American.”
Trump managed to stoke that fear and people listened, fueled by misinformation on social media and pundits bellowing all day about how the other side will destroy democracy.
“He’s not a politician, he’s a scam artist,” said Thacker, who tried to remind people that President Barack Obama didn’t come take people’s guns, President Bill Clinton didn’t, either.
His union supported a program called “Unity in the Community,” that as a response to the national reckoning on racism tried to bring together the police and the Black community. One of his members accused him of supporting a “Marxist” movement.
Thacker says typically about 35% of his members vote Republican. This year, he thinks it increased.
The Trump supporters in the union include Craig Rudisel, who spent 23 years in the military before joining the electricians’ local and has a Trump sign as big as a bathtub on his front lawn.
“I’ve had conversation with people I work with and they say ‘you need to support your brotherhood, you need to support your paycheck,”’ said Rudisel, 50. “And I say ‘I have to support my conscience.’”
Rudisel is drawn to Trump’s position on guns, abortion and taxes. He wears a Make America Great Again cap every day, and was unfazed to receive an anonymous typewritten letter in the mail from someone who described in vulgar terms how much they disapprove of his Trump sign. He likes that Trump upsets people, and he doesn’t mind doing it, either.
“He wants to make America great again, and that’s what we want,” he said. “We are tired of liberal progressive ideals. That’s not what our country was founded on and that’s not how this county should be going in the future. I want the country that I grew up in for my grandson and granddaughter.”
Rudisel is proud of Vigo County’s bellwether history. Like many here, he can off the top of his head rattle off the details of the few elections it missed and that is part of why he has clung to the hope that Trump hasn’t lost. Trump has claimed there was widespread voter fraud, despite offering no evidence to support that charge.
Rudisel thinks what happened here is proof. Vigo County and the rest of the bellwethers always get it right and opted for Trump, so he must be the rightful winner, Rudisel thinks.
Other Trump supporters also pointed to Vigo’s past performance as a sign that the election fight might not be over.
Ken Warner, a stockbroker, said he will accept a Biden presidency but he wonders how so many bellwethers could get it wrong, all at once.
Warner, 64, has toggled between Republicans and Democrats, and wasn’t terribly excited about Trump in the 2016 primary. Warner remains uneasy about the president’s personality. He cringed when Trump antagonized governors during the pandemic and hurled childish insults at people such as the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
But he grew more enthusiastic about Trump throughout his presidency. He cheered for Trump’s economic policies. He supported the tax cuts, the tariffs and his tough stance on China.
The Trump era hasn’t been a boon for Indiana’s factory towns. The sector was recovering from the Great Recession when Trump took office, but that began to stall in 2019. Then the coronavirus caused a plunge in factory jobs in the state, which are now down by almost 40,000 from a year ago.
Warner believes if Trump had gotten a second term, things might have improved. He worries the economy will stagnate under a Democratic administration.
“I think his tweets were part of his downfall,” Warner said. “But the people that voted for Trump didn’t vote for him for his personality. They voted for results.”
Joe Etling was certain that the people of Vigo County would punish Trump for his temperament. Every four years, Etling, who has run the county’s Democratic Party for 24 years, is asked by pundits and politicians to guess who will win the presidential election. This year he said Biden.
“People in this county are good, decent people. They treat people with respect, they’re polite and if you’re out and about, people on the streets are going to welcome you. Well, when you hear some of the things that the president says publicly, they’re not real friendly, they’re not real polite, they’re not real courteous,” he said. “My sense is if you had Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a room with people in Vigo County, they would have substantially more in common with Joe Biden than they ever would have Donald Trump. And yet.”
Etling refuses to accept that his county is fully Republican now.
In 2008, he saw how excited this community was about Obama. When Obama came to town, people packed a school gymnasium and screamed like he was a rock star. The county had from 1960 to 2004 voted within 3 percentage points of the national vote, but it broke that streak to vote overwhelmingly for Obama, who won this county by 16 percentage points. That margin narrowed considerably in 2012, when Obama won Vigo County by just a few hundred votes.
Then it swung wildly rightward, awarding Trump huge margins of victory, twice.
“And you would have to agree that those two gentlemen are about as diametrically opposed as anybody that you could think about. And yet people still did that,” Etling said, and so he thinks they can turn it around again.
There was a bright spot for him in 2020. One of the few Democrats elected was Dr. Janie Myers, the new coroner and the first Black woman in history to win countywide office here.
So Etling is already starting to recruit Democratic candidates to run in local races in 2022, and he thinks it can reclaim its bellwether status.
But Tingley, at the county history museum, isn’t sure this place or any place can be a bellwether these days.
“It is all politics of fear and passion. It’s not about voting for who’s right for you. It’s about avoiding the candidate that scares you the most,” she said. “If it gets back to what’s best for the country, what’s best for individuals, what’s best for communities, I think that’s when the bellwether counties all across the country can hit it again.”
In the meantime, the city is trying rebrand itself.
The signs leading into town welcome visitors to the birthplace of the Coca-Cola bottle. A glass company here invented Coke’s iconic contoured container in 1915.
There’s a mural of the bottle painted on the side of the history museum, and around the town are 39 6-foot-tall brightly-painted bottle sculptures. The goal is to promote Terre Haute as a cultural destination, steeped in Americana history.
Tingley would be happy if the city became known for that. It probably would be more reliable than predicting the president every four years.
___
Associated Press writer Josh Boak and Associated Press data journalist Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.
Feb 18, 2019 — Eugene Victor Debs left school at the age of fourteen, to scrape paint and grease off ... turned that into the Social Democratic Party, and ran for President of the United ... “I was walking by the house where I was born,” he wrote.
Jan 21, 2018 — ... footnote in presidential history, as the birthplace and lifelong home of the American socialist movement's most iconic figure, Eugene V. Debs.
Dec 2, 2009 — Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was a labor organizer and socialist leader. In 1885 he ... After embracing socialism, he became the Socialist party's ... Upon his death he was buried in Terre Haute, his home throughout his life.
An outspoken leader of the labor movement, Eugene Debs opposed Woodrow Wilson as the Socialist Party candidate in the 1912 presidential election.
POSTED SEPTEMBER 25, 2020 ALLISON DUERK
Update: The recorded and captioned program is now available to stream at this link.
100 years ago, Eugene V. Debs made his fifth and final bid for the presidency as Convict No. 9653. Imprisoned for condemning war, Debs campaigned from his Atlanta prison cell on issues that still resonate today: “real democracy and self-government and the essential rights and liberties of the people.”
“Convict 9653 at 100” will stream live on our Facebook page on October 11th at 3 pm Eastern.
Political Activist
Debs’ first experience in politics was as a young man in Terre Haute, where he served two terms as City Clerk beginning in 1879. In 1884, he ran successfully as a Democrat to represent Terre Haute in the Indiana General Assembly. History considers the 1885 State Assembly a productive legislature, but Debs did not see it that way and chose not to run for another term. By this time his official duties in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen were demanding much of his time and energy, and the labor movement seemed to Debs to be a promising way to the achievement of his reformist goals
1904 Debs/Hanford Presidential Campaign Poster
The experience of the Pullman Strike taught Debs that major changes were necessary in our laws if workers’ rights were to be advanced, so after his release from Woodstock his efforts were turned more to the political arena. He eventually aligned with the American Socialist Party and ran five times as the party’s Presidential candidate.
Debs progressive idealism showed itself in his political activities. As City Clerk he shocked the morality of citizens by refusing to assess fines on prostitutes since the police were not bringing in the pimps or the business men customers of the women of this illicit trade. In the Socialist Party, Debs was not one for the intra-party squabbles and personal rivalries which often split the party. Debs was the idea man and the great communicator, the never-tiring campaigner and spell-binding orator. He was great at mixing and touching, or in setting down and persuading on a one to one basis. Through the first two decades of the 20th century, the Socialist Party was split over power struggles and differences of opinions, but always united in supporting Debs as its presidential candidate and leading symbol.
During these campaigns the Socialist Party put a number of issues on the national agenda and advanced perhaps by decades the legislation which achieved a number of objectives for working class America. The list includes women’s suffrage (large numbers of Debs supporters were women). It includes legislation restricting child labor, and protecting workers’ rights to join unions and when necessary to strike. It would also include workplace safety, on the railroads and in the mines and factories.
Debs was a tireless campaigner, but the pshysical demands of a presidential campaign were excessive. With no radio and television spots, and with little sympathetic coverage of Progressive, Third Party causes, there was no alternative but to travel incessantly, one city or whistle-stop at a time, in searing heat or numbing cold, before crowds large or small, in whatever hall, park or train station where a crowd could be assembled.
Different from the fury of the campaign trail during these years was his guest editorials for Appeal to Reason. Published in Girard, Kansas, Debs forceful journalism worked wonders for this progressive weekly as it had done earlier for Locomotive Firemens Magazine. Debs’ popularity built the readership of Appeal to as much as a million readers, and spread progressive, Socialist ideas to a readership coming from all walks of life and all social strata.
Debs of course wanted a good vote count, but he saw his presidential campaigns also as educational and his real concern was to spread awareness of his vision of a better society, where justice, fraternity and equality would prevail. Debs ran in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920, the last race from Atlanta Prison. The slogan on a campaign poster in 1920 read: “From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920,” and a popular campaign button showed Debs in prison garb, standing outside the prison gates, with the caption: “For President Convict No. 9653. “Debs received nearly one million votes that year!
Perhaps the most colorful campaign was in 1908, when Debs used the Red Special Train to whistle-stop the country. There also was a Red Special Band. Debs spoke from the train to enthusiastic crowds dozens of times a day as he toured the country. Political campaigns before television generated interesting and sometimes novel memorabilia. A 1912 almanac (calendar) printed by the Socialist Party has the months of the year bordered by quotes from Debs such as “I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it, than for what I don’t want and get it.”
The measure of Debs and the Socialist Party is not in vote counts alone. A cartoon from the same 1912 campaign portrays the competition for progressive ideas by the parties, ideas such as voting rights for women, restrictions on child labor, and workers’ right to organize unions. It is highly doubtful if the Republicans and Democratics would have been giving at least lip service to such progressive ideas as early as 1912 had not the Socialists been popularizing these ideas since 1900. In the cartoon just mentioned, Debs is shown skinny dipping, and sees Teddy Roosevelt making off with his cloths. Another candidate is watching from behind bushes, minus his clothes, and says: “Don’t be too upset, Gene, he’s already taken ours.”
In recorded history and in popular imagination Debs is portrayed in extremes either positive or negative. The negative image portrays a radical labor baron, “King Debs,” trying to take over the railroads and destroy property rights, as unpatriotic anti-war extremist who failed miserably five times in tries for the presidency, or less negatively perhaps as a kind, great-hearted idealist who simply did not grasp the realities of economic life and human nature. The positive image shows a highly effective union leader of turn-of-the-century America, a kind, big hearted and deeply loved man, respected even by prominent Terre Haute business men who chose to overlook his radical leanings. Debs case is often cited as an example of the failure of our legal system to protect his constitutional right of freedom of speech. In organized labor there is enduring respect for Debs as one of the giants among the pioneers of the American labor movement. His kiosk stands in the Labor Hall of Fame, Department of Labor, Washington, DC as a tribute to his contributions to American labor. Labor Unions are among the most active supporters of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and union members from across Indiana and the Midwest are in regular attendance each fall when an annual award banquet is held in Terre Haute.
The experience of the Pullman Strike taught Debs that major changes were necessary in our laws if workers’ rights were to be advanced, so after his release from Woodstock his efforts were turned more to the political arena. He eventually aligned with the American Socialist Party and ran five times as the party’s Presidential candidate.
Debs progressive idealism showed itself in his political activities. As City Clerk he shocked the morality of citizens by refusing to assess fines on prostitutes since the police were not bringing in the pimps or the business men customers of the women of this illicit trade. In the Socialist Party, Debs was not one for the intra-party squabbles and personal rivalries which often split the party. Debs was the idea man and the great communicator, the never-tiring campaigner and spell-binding orator. He was great at mixing and touching, or in setting down and persuading on a one to one basis. Through the first two decades of the 20th century, the Socialist Party was split over power struggles and differences of opinions, but always united in supporting Debs as its presidential candidate and leading symbol.
During these campaigns the Socialist Party put a number of issues on the national agenda and advanced perhaps by decades the legislation which achieved a number of objectives for working class America. The list includes women’s suffrage (large numbers of Debs supporters were women). It includes legislation restricting child labor, and protecting workers’ rights to join unions and when necessary to strike. It would also include workplace safety, on the railroads and in the mines and factories.
Debs was a tireless campaigner, but the pshysical demands of a presidential campaign were excessive. With no radio and television spots, and with little sympathetic coverage of Progressive, Third Party causes, there was no alternative but to travel incessantly, one city or whistle-stop at a time, in searing heat or numbing cold, before crowds large or small, in whatever hall, park or train station where a crowd could be assembled.
Different from the fury of the campaign trail during these years was his guest editorials for Appeal to Reason. Published in Girard, Kansas, Debs forceful journalism worked wonders for this progressive weekly as it had done earlier for Locomotive Firemens Magazine. Debs’ popularity built the readership of Appeal to as much as a million readers, and spread progressive, Socialist ideas to a readership coming from all walks of life and all social strata.
Debs of course wanted a good vote count, but he saw his presidential campaigns also as educational and his real concern was to spread awareness of his vision of a better society, where justice, fraternity and equality would prevail. Debs ran in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920, the last race from Atlanta Prison. The slogan on a campaign poster in 1920 read: “From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920,” and a popular campaign button showed Debs in prison garb, standing outside the prison gates, with the caption: “For President Convict No. 9653. “Debs received nearly one million votes that year!
Perhaps the most colorful campaign was in 1908, when Debs used the Red Special Train to whistle-stop the country. There also was a Red Special Band. Debs spoke from the train to enthusiastic crowds dozens of times a day as he toured the country. Political campaigns before television generated interesting and sometimes novel memorabilia. A 1912 almanac (calendar) printed by the Socialist Party has the months of the year bordered by quotes from Debs such as “I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it, than for what I don’t want and get it.”
The measure of Debs and the Socialist Party is not in vote counts alone. A cartoon from the same 1912 campaign portrays the competition for progressive ideas by the parties, ideas such as voting rights for women, restrictions on child labor, and workers’ right to organize unions. It is highly doubtful if the Republicans and Democratics would have been giving at least lip service to such progressive ideas as early as 1912 had not the Socialists been popularizing these ideas since 1900. In the cartoon just mentioned, Debs is shown skinny dipping, and sees Teddy Roosevelt making off with his cloths. Another candidate is watching from behind bushes, minus his clothes, and says: “Don’t be too upset, Gene, he’s already taken ours.”
In recorded history and in popular imagination Debs is portrayed in extremes either positive or negative. The negative image portrays a radical labor baron, “King Debs,” trying to take over the railroads and destroy property rights, as unpatriotic anti-war extremist who failed miserably five times in tries for the presidency, or less negatively perhaps as a kind, great-hearted idealist who simply did not grasp the realities of economic life and human nature. The positive image shows a highly effective union leader of turn-of-the-century America, a kind, big hearted and deeply loved man, respected even by prominent Terre Haute business men who chose to overlook his radical leanings. Debs case is often cited as an example of the failure of our legal system to protect his constitutional right of freedom of speech. In organized labor there is enduring respect for Debs as one of the giants among the pioneers of the American labor movement. His kiosk stands in the Labor Hall of Fame, Department of Labor, Washington, DC as a tribute to his contributions to American labor. Labor Unions are among the most active supporters of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and union members from across Indiana and the Midwest are in regular attendance each fall when an annual award banquet is held in Terre Haute.
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